Sitting Atop Mount Olympus, Above the Law of God and of Man

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Sitting atop Mount Olympus, our currently reigning caesar, Barackus Obamus Ignoramus, believes that he is above the law of God and of man. Readers of this site know that Barack Hussein Obama has great contempt for the law of God as he supports the chemical and surgical assassination of innocent preborn children in their mothers' wombs, funding this genocide of babies with our own taxpayer dollars, and as he has imposed his ObamaCare monstrosity upon us in full violation of the Natural Law principle of subsidiarity. He is a social engineer and a statist almost without peer, a man who has contempt for the advice of others unless those who advise him agree with his own preconceived conclusions.

Although the very, very few readers (and fewer financial supporters) of this website really need no reminder of how the reigning caesar also possesses great contempt for the terms of the Constitution of the United States of America and of the just laws passed by Congress in pursuance thereof, his decision to continue with his war in Libya without the only kind of constitutional authorization that Congress can give, an actual declaration of war, is an impeachable offense. Barack Hussein Obama is governing without regard to anything other than his own arbitrary policy whims, ignoring the advice given him by attorneys for the United States Department of Justice and the Department of Defense that he has no authorization to proceed under the "War Powers Resolution" that became law when President Richard Milhous Nixon's Wednesday, October 24, 1973, veto of it was overridden by both Houses of the Congress of the United States of America on Wednesday, November 7, 1973:

President Obama decided he had the legal authority to continue the U.S. military campaign in Libya without congressional approval over the objections of Justice Department and Pentagon lawyers, according to The New York Times.

Instead, the president sided with other
senior administration lawyers who said that continuing U.S.
participation in the air operations against the regime of Libyan leader
Muammar al-Qaddafi did not constitute "hostilities," triggering the need
for Congressional permission under the War Powers Resolution, the New
York Times reported in its online edition Friday night.

Among those reported to support the president's action were White House counsel Robert Bauer and State Department legal adviser Harold H. Koh, the paper said. Those opposed included
Pentagon General Counsel Jeh C. Johnson and acting head of the Justice
Department's Office of Legal Counsel Caroline D. Krass.

One issue was reported to be whether firing missiles from drones amounted to hostilities.

Presidents can ignore the advice of the Office of Legal Counsel, but rarely do so, the newspaper reported.

The 1973 law prohibits the military from
being involved in actions for more than 60 days without congressional
authorization, plus a 30-day extension. The 60-day deadline passed last
month with the White House saying it is in compliance with the law. The
90-day mark is Sunday.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., a member of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that he found it "interesting
that in early April the president touted the Office of Legal Counsel's
legal opinion on actions in Libya, and now that the opinion doesn't fit
his agenda, he chooses to ignore them."

"If dropping bombs and firing missiles on
military installations are not hostilities, I don't know what is," he
said. "The president's actions on Libya are nothing short of bizarre."

White House chief spokesman Jay Carney addressed the internal debate over the resolution at his briefing Thursday.

He said "there was a robust process through
which the president received the advice he relied on in determining the
application" of the War Powers Resolution.

He noted the resolution has been subject to intense debate since it was first enacted in 1973.

"We are not going to get into the internal
process by which the president receives legal advice," Carney said. "It
should come as no surprise that there would be some disagreements, even
within an administration, regarding the application of a statute that is
nearly 40 years old to a unique and evolving conflict. Those
disagreements are ordinary and healthy." (Obama Overrules Lawyers On Libya Military Campaign.)

Although the War Powers Resolution is arguably unconstitutional as a president of the United States of America has the inherent power to undertake military action when this country is in danger of imminent attack, its imposition by Congress over a presidential veto in 1973 was meant to signify bipartisan opposition to undeclared wars such as the ones taking place at that time in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Even those conflicts can be seen as not within the genuine national interest to the security of this country, and they were undertaken without a policy to win the conflict, a necessary component of the Just War theory. Constitutional scholars are quite divided as to whether the War Powers Resolution is legally binding. It doesn't take the War Powers Resolution, however, for Congressional leaders to stop the unnecessary use of American force in situations that do not involve the legitimate national security interests of this country and thus spend taxpayer dollars to fund military exercises that are undertaken solely upon the whim of president who believes that he can act the part of a caesar in doing so.

Although there is a lot of talk from various members of Congress who oppose Obama's military intervention in Libya that he chooses, most positivistically, to deny represent "hostilities," the talk is simply that, talk. Nothing more. Other members of Congress, such as the man Obama defeated for the presidency of the United States of America on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, United States Senator John Sidney McCain III (R-Arizona), remain full-throated enthusiasts of this latest American attempt at "regime change" in a Mohammedan nation. Members of Congress are simply too cowardly to do what needs to be done in this instance, that is, to cease the funding of such operations or threaten the out-of-control caesar with impeachment. If there is no possible justification for an actual Declaration of War, you see, there is no justification for any other kind of "authorization" short of that in instances where an American president oversteps his bounds as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America to commit troops for "humanitarian" reasons that have no clear objective and no stated "end game."

As was the case with the Roman Senate of antiquity, however, our contemporary legislators preen and posture as they let the caesars do pretty much what they want. Yes, some of these legislators make noise. They are powerless to do anything other than make noise as Caesar Barackus Obamus Ignoramus intends to proceed as he has with the "mission" in Libya that is being conducted under the auspices of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (N.A.T.O.) even though the protection of civilians in Libya is not exactly in that organization's charter:

Article 5

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in
Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all
and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each
of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective
self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United
Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking
forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such
action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to
restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof
shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures
shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures
necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security .

Article 6 (1)

For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack:

on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America,
on the Algerian Departments of France (2), on the territory of or on the
Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North
Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer;

on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in
or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which
occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when
the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North
Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer. (NATO - Official text: The North Atlantic Treaty, 04-Apr.-1949.)

As there is no justification found in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's charter, which was written to protect member states from an attack by the armed forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its satellite nations in the early years of the Cold War in 1949, this institutional of regional governance relied about the dictates of that global institution of governance, the United Masonic Nations Organization, to intervene in Libya even though such intervention for "humanitarian" reasons is to be found in no part of the NATO charter and was not the intention of this who formed this mutual alliance pact. Here is the statement of justification found on the NATO website:

On March 27, NATO Allies decided to take on the whole
military operation in Libya under United Nations Security Council
Resolution 1973. The purpose of Operation Unified Protector is to
protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under threat of attack.
NATO is implementing all military aspects of the UN Resolution.

All NATO Allies are committed to fulfilling their obligations
under the UN resolution. Since the resolution was passed on March 17,
Allies have moved swiftly and decisively to enforce the arms embargo and
No-Fly Zone called for in the resolution, and to take further measures
to protect civilians and civilian populated areas from attack.

NATO is taking action as part of the broad international effort and looks forward to working with its partners in the region.

Background and timeline

Following the popular uprising which began in Benghazi on 17 February
2011, the United Nations (UN) Security Council adopted Resolution 1970.
This institutes an arms embargo, freezes the personal assets of Libya’s
leaders and imposes a travel ban on senior figures.

On 8 March, with international concern over the Libyan crisis
growing, NATO stepped up its surveillance operations in the Central
Mediterranean, deploying AWACS aircraft to provide round-the-clock
observation. These “eyes in the sky” give NATO detailed information of
movements in Libyan airspace.

On 10 March, NATO Defence Ministers supported SACEUR’s decision to
have alliance ships move to the same area to boost the monitoring
effort.

On 17 March, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1973,
authorising member states and regional organisations to, inter alia,
take “all necessary measures” to protect civilians in Libya.

On 22 March, NATO responded to the UN call by launching an operation
to enforce the arms embargo against Libya. On 23 March, NATO’s arms
embargo operation started.

NATO ships and aircraft are operating in the Central Mediterranean to
make sure that the flow of weapons to Libya by sea is cut off. They
have the right to stop and search any vessel they suspect of carrying
arms or mercenaries.

The NATO ships will not enter Libyan territorial waters. NATO has no
intention of deploying land forces anywhere in Libyan territory.

On 24 March, NATO decided to enforce the UN-mandated No-Fly Zone over
Libya. The UN resolution called for a ban on all flights, except those
for humanitarian and aid purposes, in Libyan airspace, to make sure that
civilians and civilian populated areas cannot be subjected to air
attack. (NATO and Libya: Operation Unified Protector.)

Our reigning caesar is the slave of the United Masonic Nations Organization. He is a believe in global governance. Although his use of military force differs from that of his predecessor, George Walker Bush, in that he is a multilateral globalist while Bush the Lesser is an "American exceptionalist," Caesar Obamus Ignoramus is quite literally hellbent on doing what he wants no matter who opposes him. This is Barack Hussein Obama's "war of choice" just as much as were George W. Bush's military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yes, whether we are governed by a statist of the "left" or by a statist of the "right," the caesars know what's "best" for us as they sit upon Mount Olympus to decide how it is we are going to live and how much of our money they are going to confiscate from us for their nefarious domestic programs and their international programs of war that never do anything but bankrupt us financially while compounding the debt we owe to God for the warfare that we have made upon Him by means of the slaughter of the innocent preborn and so many other grave evils protected by law and promoted in the popular culture in the name of "liberty."

The outgoing United States Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, is beginning to put a little bit of distance between himself and the current caesar as he, Gates, prepares to leave office soon prior to being succeeded by the pro-abortion, pro-perversity Catholic by the name of Leon Panetta, who served, most infamously, on a "review board" established by the conciliar "bishops" of the United States of America to assess accusations of abuse made against conciliar clerics and to make recommendations of policies to be implemented to curb that abuse. Gates now says that he has grown "weary" of "wars of choice." So have we all, Dr. Secretary. So have we all:

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates,
as he prepared to depart the government for the second time, said in an
interview on Friday that the human costs of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan had made him far more wary about unleashing the might of the
American armed forces.

“When I took this job, the United States was fighting two very
difficult, very costly wars,” Mr. Gates said. “And it has seemed to me:
Let’s get this business wrapped up before we go looking for more
opportunities.”

“If we were about to be attacked or had been attacked or something
happened that threatened a vital U.S. national interest, I would be the
first in line to say, ‘Let’s go,’ ” Mr. Gates said. “I will always be an
advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on
wars of choice.”

In December 2006, Mr. Gates was brought on by President George W. Bush
to fix Iraq, and he was kept on by President Obama to solve Afghanistan.
Even as a trained historian, he said, he has learned most clearly over
the last four and a half years that wars “have taken longer and been
more costly in lives and treasure” than anticipated.

As Mr. Gates, 67, gets ready to return to private life at the end of the
month, the futures of those two countries seem far from certain.

In the interview, Mr. Gates was asked to confirm reports of policy duels
during the two years before Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney
left office, a time in which he was said to have been successful in
altering policies or blocking missions that might have escalated into
another conflict.

“The only thing I guess I would say to that is: I hope I’ve prevented us
from doing some dumb things over the past four and a half years — or
maybe dumb is not the right word, but things that were not actually in
our interest,” Mr. Gates said.

Pressed to offer more details, Mr. Gates smiled and said, “I will in my book.”

Some of the defense secretary’s confidants, however, confirmed that Mr.
Gates prevented provocative, adventurist policies against Iran, in
particular, that might have spun into war.

“He’ll be remembered for making us aware of the danger of over-reliance
on military intervention as an instrument of American foreign policy,”
said former Senator David L. Boren, who, during his tenure as chairman
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, developed a rapport with Mr. Gates
when he was director of central intelligence in the early 1990s.

“I also think that he prevented further adventures, particularly in our
relationship with countries like Iran, that could have turned into
military intervention had he not become secretary of defense,” said Mr.
Boren, who is now president of the University of Oklahoma. “I think that
he stepped us back from a policy of brinkmanship.” (Robert M. Gates Weary of 'Wars of Choice'.)

Well, at least there's one naturalist who was able to curb the insatiable appetite of former Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney for all war, all the time. It's a shame that it took Gates, who holds an earned doctorate in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University, to learn about the tragic cost of what he calls "wars of choice," which are, at least in my view, better described as needless, unjust, wasteful and immoral wars undertaken by men who believe that they can change the world by use of armed force alone absent any submission whatsoever to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law as they have been entrusted by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ exclusively to His Catholic Church for their eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. Then again, a naturalist can reach reasonable conclusions now and again while lacking even the tiniest grasp about the simple fact that it is impossible for a danger engaged in the promotion of sin at home and abroad to be any kind of true instrument of peace in the world-at-large. After all, folks, one of the first things that American policy-makers in the administration of the "pro-life" George Walker Bush sent into Iraq following the American invasion of that country on March 20, 2003, were contraceptive pills and devices, not exactly the foundation of "a better world."

Although I will append a section from an earlier article dealing with how utterly defenseless the American Constitution is against those who want to misuse the plain language of its text for whatever purposes they desire, suffice it to reiterate here the simple fact that those who govern must descend more and more into scofflaw tyrants as the sins that they commit personally and promote under cover of the law increase exponentially. It was only the Actual Graces that flowed into the world from the offerings of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition--and its mutant variations after 1956--in this country that kept the process of statism from advancing more than it had prior to that time. The promulgation of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service by Giovanni Montini/Paul VI on April 3, 1969, and its implementation on November 30, 1969, dried up the wellsprings of grace, thus resulting in a cascade of unrepentant sins and the further spread and institutionalization of statism here in the alleged "land of the free and the home of the brave."

Lost on even thoughtful naturalists such as Dr. Robert M. Gates and on ideologues such as George Walker Bush and his gang of neoconservative war hawks and Barack Hussein Obama and his claque of globalists is the fact that there can be no true order at home or peace in the world absent the Catholic Faith's exercise of the Social Reign of Christ the King. The Social Reign of Christ the King is not a guarantor of order within countries or peace among them. Not at all. It is, however, a necessary precondition of true social order within nations and an enduring peace among them as men seek, despite their sins and failings, to pursue the common temporal good in light of man's Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven.

Perhaps it is useful yet again, yes, even for the very, very few people who remain as readers of this site, to reiterate what Pope Pius XI taught in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

The only remedy for such state of affairs is the peace of Christ since the peace of Christ is the peace of God, which could not exist if it did not enjoin respect for law, order, and
the rights of authority. In the Holy Scriptures We read: "My children,
keep discipline in peace." (Ecclesiasticus xli, 17) "Much peace have
they that love the law, O Lord." (Psalms cxviii, 165) "He that feareth
the commandment, shall dwell in peace." (Proverbs xiii, 13) Jesus Christ
very expressly states: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's."
(Matt. xxii, 21) He even recognized that Pilate possessed authority
from on High (John xiv, 11) as he acknowledged that the scribes and
Pharisees who though unworthy sat in the chair of Moses (Matt. xxiii, 2)
were not without a like authority. In Joseph and Mary, Jesus respected
the natural authority of parents and was subject to them for the greater
part of His life. (Luke ii, 51) He also taught, by the voice of His
Apostle, the same important doctrine: "Let every soul be subject to
higher powers: for there is no power but from God." (Romans xiii, 1; cf.
also 1 Peter ii, 13, 18)

If we stop to reflect for a moment that these
ideals and doctrines of Jesus Christ, for example, his teachings on the
necessity and value of the spiritual life, on the dignity and sanctity
of human life, on the duty of obedience, on the divine basis of human
government, on the sacramental character of matrimony and by consequence
the sanctity of family life -- if we stop to reflect, let Us repeat,
that these ideals and doctrines of Christ (which are in fact but a
portion of the treasury of truth which He left to mankind) were confided
by Him to His Church and to her alone for safekeeping, and that He has
promised that His aid will never fail her at any time for she is the
infallible teacher of His doctrines in every century and before all
nations, there is no one who cannot clearly see what a
singularly important role the Catholic Church is able to play, and is
even called upon to assume, in providing a remedy for the ills which
afflict the world today and in leading mankind toward a universal peace.

Because the Church is by divine institution the sole depository and interpreter of the ideals and teachings of Christ, she alone possesses in any complete and true sense the power effectively to
combat that materialistic philosophy which has already done and, still
threatens, such tremendous harm to the home and to the state. The Church alone can introduce into society and maintain therein the
prestige of a true, sound spiritualism, the spiritualism of Christianity
which both from the point of view of truth and of its practical value
is quite superior to any exclusively philosophical theory. The Church is
the teacher and an example of world good-will, for she is able to
inculcate and develop in mankind the "true spirit of brotherly love"
(St. Augustine, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae, i, 30) and by raising
the public estimation of the value and dignity of the individual's soul
help thereby to lift us even unto God.

Finally, the Church is able to set both public and
private life on the road to righteousness by demanding that everything
and all men become obedient to God "Who beholdeth the heart," to His
commands, to His laws, to His sanctions. If the teachings of the Church
could only penetrate in some such manner as We have described the inner
recesses of the consciences of mankind, be they rulers or be they
subjects, all eventually would be so apprised of their personal and
civic duties and their mutual responsibilities that in a short time
"Christ would be all, and in all." (Colossians iii, 11)

Since the Church is the safe and sure guide to
conscience, for to her safe-keeping alone there has been confided the
doctrines and the promise of the assistance of Christ, she is able not
only to bring about at the present hour a peace that is truly the peace
of Christ, but can, better than any other agency which We know of, contribute greatly to the securing of the same peace for the future, to
the making impossible of war in the future. For the Church teaches (she alone has been given by God the mandate and the right to teach with authority)
that not only our acts as individuals but also as groups and as nations
must conform to the eternal law of God. In fact, it is much more
important that the acts of a nation follow God's law, since on the
nation rests a much greater responsibility for the consequences of its
acts than on the individual.

When, therefore, governments and nations follow in
all their activities, whether they be national or international, the
dictates of conscience grounded in the teachings, precepts, and example
of Jesus Christ, and which are binding on each and every individual,
then only can we have faith in one another's word and trust in the
peaceful solution of the difficulties and controversies which may grow
out of differences in point of view or from clash of interests. An
attempt in this direction has already and is now being made; its
results, however, are almost negligible and, especially so, as far as
they can be said to affect those major questions which divide seriously
and serve to arouse nations one against the other. No merely human institution of today can
be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be
in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the
possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It
cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated;
still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge
the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their
way back to the safe road. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour, Christ the King, has entrusted the cause of genuine world peace not to the naturalists who sit atop their own imaginary Mount Olympuses as they believe themselves to be above the laws of God and man. No, Christ the King has entrusted the cause of genuine world peace to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a message that He gave His Most Blessed Mother to communicate to Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Lucia dos Santos in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, ninety-four years ago now. Why do we tarry in praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits so as to our part to make possible the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and thus of the Social Reign of Christ the King?

We must consider a privilege given us by the good God to be alive in these challenging times as we pray our Rosaries and make many sacrifices as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. We have work to do, namely, to plant the seeds for the conversion of men and their nations to the true Faith, the Catholic Faith, which alone is the sole foundation of personal and social order.

It will be only when men and their nations are converted to the Catholic Faith that their constitutions will truly bind them together and serve legitimate national interests as civil leaders seek to pursue the common temporal good in light of the man's Last End, the possession of the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, god the Son and God the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven, remembering that, as Pope Saint Pius X noted in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, "the civil powermust not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it." It will be only then that civil constitutions will serve the interests of men in this life because they seek to serve God through His Catholic Church as our mater and magister exercises the Social Reign of Christ the King, only then that we will have civil rulers who, like Saint Louis IX and Saint Wenceslaus and Saint Edward and Saint Casimir and Saint Canute and Saint Stephen of Hungary and Saint Henry the Emperor, will humble themselves on their knees before the King's Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament rather than appear to be above the laws of God and man as they sit atop their own imaginary Mount Olympuses.

It takes a lot of dodging on the part of
those who have made demigods out of the framers of the Constitution of
the United States of America to refuse to admit that it is entirely
logical for contemporary jurists and elected officials to have has
little regard for the plain meaning of the words contained in that
document's text as Protestants and modernist Catholics have shown for
the plain meaning of the words of Sacred Scripture as they have been
given and explained to us by the infallible teaching authority of the
Catholic Church. Why should we have any more reverence for the words of
mere men, whose bodies have long since decayed after their deaths, when
the written Word of God can be deconstructed of Its plain meaning to
suit the arbitrary whims of men?

It is important to remember this fact as the
Constitution is utterly defenseless against being misinterpreted as its
framers did not accept the fact that there is an ultimate teaching
authority to be found in the Catholic Church to guide men as they pursue
the common temporal good in light of man's Last End: the possession of
the glory the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God
the Holy Ghost. Although Holy Mother Church leaves it to the prudence of
men to form the specific institutional arrangements by which they will
govern themselves in a particular body politic, she does insist that men
defer to her in all that pertains to the good of souls and that they
seek to pursue virtue in their own lives by cooperating with the graces
won for them by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on the wood of
the Holy Cross that flows into their hearts and souls through the
loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.

Men who do not accept this, however, will find that
all of their efforts to provide for a just social order, no matter how
well-intentioned, will decay over the course of time. The fact that the
specific institutional arrangements to be found in the Constitution of
the United States of America, none of which is objectionable in se to
the Catholic Faith, have been used to pursue more and more manifest
injustices that are at odds even the words found in the document's text
and are opposed to written thought of the framers themselves is the
result of the anti-Incarnational premises which formed their
intellectual perspectives. We are witnessing a more open and thus
obvious collapse of the order that was meant to be provided by the
Constitution for a variety of reasons, including, of course, the fact
that there has been a deprivation of Sanctifying and Actual Graces in
the world as a result of the doctrinal and liturgical revolutions of
conciliarism.

The proximate root cause of this decay was caused by
the false premises of the American founding that have led jurists and
politicians to make as much short work of the text of the Constitution
as the plain words of Holy Writ have been made by the Scriptural and
dogmatic relativism that Protestantism let loose on the world nearly
five hundred years ago. The framers of the American Constitution were
but the victims of Protestantism's revolution against the objective
nature of Revealed Truth.

The men who framed the
Constitution of the United States of America were products of the
Protestant Revolt and of the so-called Age of Reason (or Enlightenment).
They accepted without question the belief that it was possible for men
of divergent religious beliefs–or the lack thereof–to work together
reasonably for the common good without referencing any one church as the
foundation of a country’s civil order. They believed further in the
heresy of semi-Pelagianism, which contends that men have enough inherent
grace in themselves to be good, that we do not need belief, in access
to or cooperation with sanctifying grace to be virtuous. The framers of
the Constitution believed that men of “civic virtue” would present
themselves for public service and would, after a long process of
compromise, negotiation and bargaining amongst the diverse interests and
opinions represented in the United States Congress, make decisions that
redounded to the common good (see, for example, James Madison, The Federalist, Numbers 10 and 51).

James Madison himself quite specifically believed that there was no
one “opinion” that could unite men of such divergent backgrounds as
found themselves in the United States of America at the end of the
Eighteenth Century. Thus, a dialectical process of conflict amongst
divergent interests (religious, sectional, economic, occupational) had
to be created to force those who took positions that constituted a
majority “view” at any time to at least consider the viewpoints of those
who were in the minority of a given issue. In this way, Madison
reasoned, whatever majorities emerged in Congress on any piece of
legislation would be transient, indigenous to one particular issue at
one particular time, and sensitive to and concerned about the rights of
those who disagreed with them. Such a system, which was premised on the
exercise of statesmanship on the part of those elected to serve in
Congress and as President, would create the “extended commercial
republic” where no one person or interest could predominate on all
issues at all times.

The institutional arrangements created to effect this “extended
commercial republic” were very complex. A division of powers between the
central government and the state governments (Federalism). A separation
of powers amongst the three branches of the central government
involving a number of checks and balances. Different powers given to
each of the two chambers of the Congress (bicameralism). Staggered
elections for the members of the United States Senate, a body whose
members were elected by state legislatures until the ratification of the
Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. Popular election originally of only one
body, the House of Representatives. A President elected by electors
appointed by whatever method deemed best by state legislatures. All of
this was supposed to produce a tension that resulted in internal
safeguards to prevent, although not absolutely make impossible, the
abuse of power and the rise of the tyranny of the majority.

There is only one little problem with this schemata: it was premised
on the belief that matters of civil governance do not have to be
founded in a reliance on the Deposit of Faith that Our Lord has
entrusted to His true Church and that the Church herself has no role to
play to serve as the ultimate, divinely-instituted check on the abuse of
temporal governmental power. It was difficult enough for the Church at
times during the Middle Ages, when she exercised the Social Reign of
Christ the King, to restrain certain rulers. It is impossible for any
purely human institution to restrain the vagaries of fallen human nature
over the course of time. Men who are not mindful of their First Cause
and their Last End as He has revealed Himself solely through His true
Church will descend to their lower natures sooner rather than later.

This is what happened in short order following the ratification of the Constitution.

Political parties arose
during President George Washington’s tenure in office. Although
Washington himself abhorred the rise of political parties and saw the
dangers that would threaten national order if professional, career
politicians emerged as a caste undo themselves, he was powerless to stop
them from forming and taking over the entirety of the governmental
process. Although the names of the political parties have changed over
the last two hundred ten years, the partisan political divisions that
developed during the Washington Administration have come to define the
very nature of American electoral politics and the making of public
policy. What is best for a particular political party is best for the
nation. So much for the pursuit of the common temporal good on a purely
naturalistic level, no less in light of man's Last End.

The era of “Jacksonian Democracy” from 1828 to 1836 spelled the
death-knell for the founders’ misplaced hopes that the Constitution
itself would serve as a safeguard against the dangers posed by raw
majoritarianism, the essence of Andrew Jackson’s political beliefs,
which were derived from the American Revolution’s foreign cousin, the
French Revolution. All notion of a political system that restrained the
exercise of raw political power was pure mythology from Jackson’s time
forward.

Abraham Lincoln had little regard for Constitutional restraints.

Woodrow Wilson, an Anglophile, believed that he was a Prime Minister entitled to reflexive support of the Congress.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt broke every law imaginable
to pursue his statist policies of the New Deal and the involvement of
the United States in World War II.

John Kennedy, Lyndon
Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack
Hussein Obama each have seen fit to make the Constitution suit their own
purposes, sometimes by ignoring it entirely or, at least in some cases,
by getting a compliant Supreme Court of the United States of America to
ratify their abuses of power.

Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States have justified
the creation of so-called “independent regulatory agencies, which
violate the principles of “separation of powers” by exercising each of
three powers of government (legislative, executive, judicial), applied
the provisions of the Bill of Rights, written to restrain the powers of
the central government and not the state governments,
to the state governments through the Fourteenth Amendment’s “due process
of law” clause, thereby expanding the power of the central government
greatly, circumscribed the legitimate powers of the states to supervise
their own elections, and have served as laboratories of rank social
engineering by making it impossible to prevent the sale of
contraceptives and to permit the execution of the innocent unborn by
abortion and the elderly by means of the withdrawal of food and water
and by “doctor-assisted suicide.” And this is to say nothing about how
the "commerce clause" (subsection eight of section eight of Article I of
the Constitution) has been used to justify expansions of the power of
the Federal government that make poor King George III seem like quite an
amateur in the practice of abusing executive powers.

Many of the various people who have served as
justices of the Supreme Court of the United States over the years have
believed that the words of the Constitution represent either the
ultimate authority pertaining to the exercise of governmental power or
are so fungible as to admit of constant re-interpretation. Cases
involving various constitutional principles may be decided one way at
one time and another way at another time. Few things are ever "settled"
entirely the Supreme Court decisions unless the naturalists of the
"left" are satisfied. We have too much evidence of how the naturalists
of the "right" talk about "reversing" various Supreme Court decisions
(such as the decisions in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton,
January 22, 1973) at one time to wind up "settling" for what their
counterparts in the "left" believe is "settled" law. How much talk have
you heard this year from candidates on the "right" about reversing Roe v. Wade? Point made, thank you very much.

Such is the inevitable,
inexorable result of a country that rejects the belief that all civil
law, whether exercised by a central government or state governments,
must be subordinated in all things at all times to the binding precepts
of the Divine positive law and the natural law as those laws have been
entrusted to and explicated by Holy Mother Church.

No level of government, whether central or state, has any authority
to permit any action contrary to God’s law and thus injurious to the
sanctification and salvation of the souls of its citizens. No mere human
constitution is above God’s law. No mere human being has the right to
decide for himself that he is exempt from the immutable doctrine of the
Social Reign of Christ the King. Thus, those men, including the framers
of the Constitution of the United States of America, no matter how
well-intentioned, who believed that it is possible for “reasonable men”
to pursue the “common good” absent a subordination of their lives and
their work to Our Lord as He has revealed Himself through His true
Church are bound to set their descendants on a downward spiral that will
end only in the destruction of their nation or when said nation is
converted to the true Faith.

What does any of this mean to the currently reigning
caesar, Barack Hussein Obama? Nothing. He lives in utter ignorance,
convinced of his own righteous, convinced that he can twist and distort
the plain words of the Constitution to justify his statist policies.